When your body goes on strike: Side effects of IBD

When you have IBD, it’s bad enough to have gastrointestinal issues, but sometimes you also experience the additional “side effects” or extraintestinal manifestations of the disease. These extraintestinal symptoms pop up as a result of increased inflammation throughout your entire body. Problems like arthritis (inflammation of the joints), uveitis (eye), erythema nodosum (skin), pyoderma gangrenosum (skin) and apthous stomatitis (a very fancy term for mouth ulcers) are just one more inconvenience that Crohn’s and colitis patients experience.

One possible explanation for developing these conditions is that bacterial proteins that can trigger inflammation in the intestine may also trigger inflammatory responses in other parts of the body. Therefore, if your immune system mounts an attack against bad bacteria in your gut, it’s more likely to program itself to “search and destroy” the same bacterial signals other places, like in your joints or the lining of your mouth. Of course not everyone gets these side effects, similar to everyone having various reactions to different treatments and medications. Genetics probably plays a role in the susceptibility to anyone or perhaps many of the conditions listed above.

I experienced some of these problems but only when I was in the middle of a flare. However, I know people that have had extraintestinal issues when they had no gastrointestinal symptoms of IBD. Thankfully, I rarely had more than one side effect at a time, either arthritis or uveitis or erythema nodosum. As I was reading up for this article, I also found that a large percent of IBD patients have lower back pain that might be caused to inflammation. Even now, I’m finding that most of what I have experienced is all related – I always thought my back just hurt from hunching over when my stomach was acting up.

I didn’t find out that all of these side effects were part of the IBD package until several years after I was diagnosed. I just rolled with the punches and sucked it up, but fortunately there are a lot of treatments available to help relieve and cure the extraintestinal symptoms. It’s one less obstacle to recovery if you recognize the symptoms and get it checked out. Having intestinal issues is enough of a challenge without the rest of your body trying to rebel against you too!